


Nature

by annuska



Series: Sonadow Week 2019 (Twitter) [4]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Dissociation, Established Relationship, M/M, Memory Loss, Mental Illness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, hallucination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-12 13:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19229956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annuska/pseuds/annuska
Summary: It's in Shadow's nature to be quiet. Sometimes it worries Sonic anyway.(Please look in tags for content warnings.)





	Nature

Shadow was a quiet person.

It had taken Sonic some time to get used to that.

Sonic could be quiet, too—he enjoyed reading and napping, enjoyed sitting in silence by himself or with others—but it always had to be on his terms. Sometimes, it was all he craved; other times, he couldn’t stand the absence of sound, and needed to fill the void with _something._

But Shadow didn’t seem to have an on-off switch like Sonic; he was simply _quiet_.

It had taken Sonic some time to get used to, but he had learned to accept and live with it… _most_ the time. Most the time, the quiet was because Shadow had no thoughts he cared to voice, or because he needed the reprieve of quiet, and it came gently, comfortably.

Sometimes, though, the quiet came like a knife, cutting Shadow away from all reality. Sometimes the quiet loomed over him, stole the light from his eyes, and put something distant there instead. Sometimes Shadow caught himself, shook it off, and answered Sonic’s worried inquiries with a simple explanation: “I zoned out.”

But other times, he didn’t catch himself, and Sonic caught it instead, finding Shadow’s far away gaze facing the window but looking at nothing in particular. Shadow would be unresponsive, and Sonic too afraid to touch him, as if he would break him.

And so he simply waited, helplessly.

Worrying as these episodes of dissociation were, Sonic knew all he could do was wait it out, and Shadow would come back around—then Sonic could _do_ something: make Shadow food, cuddle with him under the covers, give him a cup of tea, talk him through the aftermath of the episode. He just had to wait for Shadow to come back around. He always did.

Until he didn’t.

It _seemed_ like he did, at first: his eyes shifted, he blinked a couple times, and he shook his head, same as always. But when he turned to Sonic, his first words weren’t _I zoned out again_ , but instead: “Where am I?”

“You’re at home,” Sonic said, thinking little of it. He knew Shadow to be confused after these episodes.

“This… isn’t home.”

Sonic shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shaking his head a bit. “It’s alright, Shad. It’ll come back to you in a minute.”

“My name is Shadow.”

“Yeah, I—I know,” Sonic said, shifting again. He reached over for Shadow’s arm, gently. “Let’s go outside, it always helps clear yo—”

Shadow smacked Sonic’s hand away and all but jumped back, holding his arm up across his chest defensively. “Don’t touch me. I don’t even know you. Who are you and why am I here?”

Sonic’s heart sank down into his stomach, but he tried to stay composed. It was, to say the least, difficult, and he could just feel the unease pulling at his facial features. “It’s… it’s alright, Shadow. It’s m—my name is Sonic. I’m… trying to help you.”

There was a long moment of silence in which Shadow stared at Sonic, trying to figure him and his intentions out, and Sonic let him. He let the silence overwhelm him for once, grounding himself by listening to the ambient sounds in the air around them: the tick of a clock Shadow had hung in the living room; the quiet hum of the game console Sonic had on before Shadow had “zoned out”; the distant buzz of a neighbor mowing their lawn. The sunlight streamed in through the window, falling on Shadow and painting him with a warm glow. There wasn't much that frightened Sonic, but now his heart thumped heavily in his chest, and each beat was like a punch squarely set between his lungs.

He’d seen Shadow’s moments of memory loss before, helped him through them, but they tended to be smaller things: missing moments in his past, or their shared past; something he had just said or done; sometimes even an entire place or person. Sometimes he remembered, sometimes he didn’t. But total memory loss, displacing him from the present and projecting him into a point in the past where he didn’t even know Sonic? These episodes were more difficult.

Sonic knew they were difficult for Shadow, too.

The first time it happened, he had been at a lost. He’d done all he could to remind Shadow where he was, what was going on, but Shadow had only pulled away, distrusting and threatened. He’d left, Chaos Controlled away, nowhere to be found by Sonic. After a panicked conversation with Rouge, they found him, standing and overlooking the city some miles away, but she didn’t let Sonic approach him.

“You’ve already scared him away,” she said, shaking her head. “Now all you can do is wait for him to come around.”

“I just tried to remind him,” Sonic said, helplessly, his feet itching to move.

“That’s not how you deal with memory loss or hallucination or delusion,” she said, placing a hand on Sonic’s shoulder. “It’ll be alright, Sonic. It took me a couple times to learn, too.”

And so now, he stood waiting, despite the fear. He fought against every natural instinct in his body urging him to _do something, move, stop just standing there!_ , and told himself that action/reaction was not the answer to everything. Sometimes the answer was to slow down and do nothing.

“Okay,” Shadow finally said, lowering his arm down slowly. “You don’t… seem like you’re lying.” 

A slow smile found its way to Sonic’s face and he nodded, leading Shadow outside with careful, intentional movements contrary to his nature.

It wasn’t the second or even third or fourth time he’d been alone with Shadow during one of these episodes now, but they never got easier. Rouge had explained to him that trying to force Shadow out of it was more harmful than going along with the hallucination, that Sonic should play along until Shadow naturally snapped out of it. It felt contradictory, as if he was lying to Shadow, and he didn’t understand at first. How could he just stand there and say, _Yeah, Shadow, we’ll find your missing friend. She has to be here somewhere_ , knowing full well she wasn’t and never would be? How was he supposed to tell Shadow that yes, he would help him find a way to reactivate the Eclipse Cannon?

It’s not about lying to him, Rouge had said. It’s about keeping him safe. Keeping the delusion from getting worse.

And now, as Sonic led Shadow out into the garden, he knew that a safe delusion was a lot better than a dangerous one. He watched Shadow look around, as if stunned by the tranquility of it all, as if he’d never known such peace—or at least, not for a long, long time.

“You tend to this garden?” Shadow asked, approaching a hydrangea bush and touching one of the blooms tenderly.

“Yeah—well—me and my, um, boyfriend.”

“Huh.” Shadow turned around and smiled at Sonic. “You’re both fortunate to have all this. It’s beautiful.”

Sonic sat down on the bench and reached down to untangle a stray vine before looking back at Shadow. “No, I’m definitely the fortunate one. It makes waiting for him worth it, even if it’s hard.”

Shadow stared at Sonic for a moment, searchingly, then sat down next to him on the bench. “I see. I hope he returns soon, then.”

Sonic watched Shadow lean over to smell a rose, and smiled to himself. “He always leaves something with me, though. I just have to be patient.”

**Author's Note:**

> day 4 for @SonadowWeek at Twitter!


End file.
